1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to programmable chips. In one example, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for using a high-level programming language to implement a programmable chip.
2. Description of Related Art
Some mechanisms for implementing a programmable chip entail using a general purpose programming language or high-level language. In one example, code written in a general purpose programming language such as C or C++ is converted into a hardware descriptor language (HDL) file using a tool such as the DK1 Design Suite available from Celoxica Corporation of Abingdon, England. The HDL file can then be synthesized and implemented on a programmable chip such as a programmable logic device (PLD) or a field programmable gate array (FPGA). Some available synthesis tools are Leonardo Spectrum, available from Mentor Graphics Corporation of Wilsonville, Oreg. and Synplify available from Synplicity Corporation of Sunnyvale, Calif. In many instances, it is desirable to specify the number of resources to associate with particular code sequences.
However, mechanisms for efficiently specifying the number of resources to use with various codes sequences are limited. It is therefore desirable to provide improved methods and apparatus for specifying hardware resource counts in high-level language programming language sequences or subroutines.